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DISCOURSE 



EDUCATION 



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DELIVERED AT 



BRAINTREE, THURSDAY, OCT. 24, 1839. 



BY JOHN aUINCY ADAMS. 



^'BOSTON: 
PRINTED BY PERKINS & MARVIN, 
1840. 



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To the Hon. John Q.uincy Adam». 

Eespected Sir, 

The undersigned, a Committee chosen by the citizens of the town of Braintree, 
tender to you their respectful considerations for the eloquent and valuable Address delivered 
by you on the important subject of Education, on the 24th ult., and request a copy of the 
same for publication. 

With sentiments of shicere regard and respect, 

Your obedient servants, 

MINOTT THAYER, 
JOHN HOBART, 



SAMUEL HAYDEN, ' Committee. 

JOHN M. HOLLINGSWORTH 
Braintree, Nov. 20, 1839. 



} 



Messrs. Minott Thayer, John Hobart, Samuel Hatden, and JohnM. Hollikgsworth, 
a Committee of the Inhabitants of the Town of Braintree. 

Gentlemen, 
A copy of the Address delivered by me, on the 24th of October last, before the inhabi- 
tants of the town of Braintree, is, in compliance with their obliging request, submitted to 
your disposal, by your friend and fellow-citizen, 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
Decemher 10, 1839. 



TO THE 

INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN OF BRAINTREE, 

THIS 

DISCOURSE ON EDUCATION, 

DELIVERED AT THEIR REQUEST BEFORE THEM, 

IS INSCRIBED AND DEDICATED TO THEM AND THEIR CHILDREN, 

BY THEIR NATIVE TOWNSMAN, 

AND AFFECTIONATE FELLOW CITIZEN, 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 



DISCOURSE. 



The celebrated Historian of England, David Hume, 
in the account of his life written in the 65th year of his 
age by himself, says, '' I am, or rather was (for that is the 
style I must now use in speaking of myself, which em- 
boldens me the more to speak my sentiments) ; I tvas, I 
say, a man of mild disposition," &c. then giving his own 
character, according to his own estimate of it. 

Men and women of Braintree ! I have lived eight years 
longer in this world of vicissitudes and cares, than David 
Hume had lived when he felt himself bound to assume 
this style, and when he considered it as investing him 
with the privilege of speaking more boldly his sentiments, 
than he might have done while speaking in the present 
tense. 

Am I not then authorised by his example, to invert the 
order of his transition from the present to the past, and to 
say — I was or rather I am one of yourselves ? I was born 
at Braintree ; and in the revolution of time, I am, one of 
the oldest inhabitants of that Town. In Braintree I first 
beheld the light of Heaven — first breathed the atmosphere 
of your granite rocks — first sucked with my mother's 
milk the love of Liberty, and the reverence for the Gospel 
of truth. In early childhood, in the midst of the storm 
of the war of Independence, in the dead of Winter, I 
embarked at the very spot where your forefathers landed 



at the foot of Mount Wollaston — I embarked, with a 
father, upon the tempestuous ocean, for realms beyond the 
Atlantic tide ; defying the battle and the breeze for the 
cause of your Country. Since then, for a space of forty 
years I led a wandering life, in distant regions ; always in 
the service of your fathers or in yours ; always grateful to 
Heaven for having made me a Braintree boy, and always 
feeling the sentiments, which once on losing sight of the 
blue hills in your neighborhood, I committed to paper in 
the following lines : 

And you, ye distant hills of blue — 

To whom I bid, with bosom burning, 
When wending far, my last Adieu ; 

And first to greet mine eyes returning; 
Oh ! how shall speech in words convey, 

Words, the heart holds not in derision, 
The pang that points your parting ray. 

The bliss that wings your meeting vision. 

Let me then in addressing you, fellow citizens of Brain- 
tree, say I ivas or rather I am a native of the town of 
Braintree, and let that be your motive for indulging me 
with the freedom of speech — with more boldness than I 
might presume to use, if I came among you as a stranger. 

And I make this appeal to your kind and indulgent 
feelings because I shall need it. David Hume took it as a 
warrant of authority to speak his sentiments boldly, 
because at the age of 65 he claimed to be a man of a 
former age ; restrained by none of those prudential consid- 
erations which admonish a speaker in addressing the public 
to abstain from exciting topics, and to say nothing with 
which the prepossessions of his hearers might not cordially 
sympathise — Yet he had not then attained, and never 
reached the allotted boundary of old age to man — the 
three score years and ten of his earthly pilgrimage ; which 
I have already passed. I have then a stronger claim than 
his upon the mere score of age to speak my sentiments 



boldly, and that which is thus my right, becomes my im- 
perious and overrnling duty, towards you the inhabitants 
of my native town, of which through all the wanderings 
of a long and eventful life, I have never ceased in the 
sincerity of my soul to say, 

" Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, 
My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee." 

When I undertook the arduous, but not unwelcome task 
of addressing you in public, it was intimated to me that it 
might be agreeable to yon to hear me upon that most in- 
teresting subject to you and to your posterity, the educa- 
tion of your children ; and the desire of discoursing to you 
upon the theme, not less than in the manner the most 
acceptable to yourselves, was of strong prevailment to in- 
duce a ready compliance with that intimation. 

But what could I possibly say to you for the advance- 
ment of the cause of education which you do not habit- 
ually say to yourselves ? — We are almost daily celebrating 
in every part of New England, the accomplishment of two 
centuries since the first gathering of a church or the 
incorporation of a town. A few weeks only have past 
away since the filial reverence of the descendants from the 
first founders of the church and religious society at Mount 
Wollaston, paid this tribute of commemoration to the 
virtues of their forefathers — and within the compass of 
another year it is your purpose to strew flowers over the 
sepulchres of those patriarchs of our land by a similar 
festival to keep in remembrance the founders of our prim- 
itive town of Braintree. We have embalmed anew the 
venerable remains of our first Pastor and Teacher William 
Thomson and Henry Flint ; but there is an incident con- 
nected with the history of the latter, not less precious 
than any other memorial in his individual life. On his 
grave stone, yet standing in the cemetery of the church in 
Q,uincy, of which he was a principal founder, is yet legible 



8 

the following record — " Here lies interred the body of the 
Rev. Mr. Henry Flint, who came to New England in the 
year 1635, was ordained the first teacher of the church of 
Braintray 1639, and died April 27, 1668. He had the 
character of a gentleman, remarkable for his piety, learning, 
wisdom and fidelity in his ofiice." Men and women of 
Braintree ! had the monumental inscription upon the tomb 
of the beloved instructor and spiritual monitor, counseller 
and guide, of your forefather pilgrims of the first cis- 
atlantic generation terminated here, might I not have 
invited you to pause and meditate — ^to inquire how much 
of the peace, how much of the earthly happiness, how 
much of the piety and virtue, how much of the eternal 
welfare of your ancestors of five generations, of yourselves, 
of your children and your children's children to the end 
of time, may be directly and indirectly traced to those 
qualities thus testified as characteristics of this venerable 
man ? — But the blessed memorial stops not here, it proceeds 
— " By him on his right hand lies the body of Margery, 
his beloved consort who died March 1686-7. Her maid- 
en name was Hoar. She was a gentlewoman of piety, 
prudence, and peculiarly accomplished for instructing young 
gentlewomen, many being sent to her from other towns, 
especially from Boston." Women of Braintree, let me 
now appeal to you ! If I was authorised to inquire how 
highly is to be estimated by your townsmen of the present 
generation, the blessing of being descended from fathers 
who were fed with the nourishment of the bread of life 
by a shepherd of souls so distinguished as the first teacher 
of the Braintree Church, how much more emphatically 
may I ask the same question of you, who in addition to 
the enjoyment of the same benefits, may look back to 
the matrons of the town from its first foundation, as blest 
with the means of education suited to the tenderness, the 
refinement and delicacy of their sex. The solicitude of 
the first fathers of New England for the education of 



9 

their sons has been among their brightest claims to renown 
in all succeeding ages. And shall it not be among the 
garlands of glory to the women of Braintree, that in the 
roll of their primitive mothers, the wife of their first 
pastor was not only eminent as an instructress of wisdom 
and virtue, but that her services to the age and land in 
which she lived, were so worthily appreciated by her 
surviving cotemporary inhabitants of the town, that their 
grateful acknowledgment and remembrance of them yet 
lives and breathes and speaks to us all, from the assembled 
multitude of the surrounding dead, and from the voice of 
her husband's tomb. 

— It is an opinion universally entertained that the first 
and great impulse to the settlement of New England was 
Religion. But has it been sufficiently considered, and 
may I be permitted to inquire, whether Religion is not 
herself the child of Education, and whether it would not 
be more proper to say, that Education was from its first 
origin the governing principle of the settlement of New 
England, or in other words that Education was the mother 
of New England ? 

What is Religion 1 Is it not the sentiment in the heart 
of man, of his own immortal nature, and of his responsi- 
bility to a tribunal not of earth for his conduct upon earth. 
The existence of a God ; the immortality of the human 
soul, and future retribution, are the elements of what is 
called Natural Religion — but even these first principles are 
not of spontaneous growth in the human heart. They 
are the fruits of Education — they must be taught. They 
were revealed by God himself to the first created man, 
and to his' partner in the Garden of Eden, and they are 
still taught to Christians of all denominations in the Mo- 
saic narrative of the Creation. 

But this is not the Religion which prompted the settle- 
ment of New England — for this is a creed common to 
the Christian, Mohammedan and Jew throughout the habi- 
2 



10 

table globe. The first settlers of New England were 
Christians of the most straitest sect. Their text-book 
was the Bible ; a book written by various authors — in 
different periods of the world — the latest, sixteen hundred 
years remote, at the time of the settlement of New Eng- 
land, and all, in languages no longer extant save in the 
memory of the profoundly learned. 

In this book were contained the history of the human 
race from the creation of the world ; a rule of faith, for the 
relations between man and his Maker ; a rule of life, for 
the government of his relations with his fellow creature 
man — and the glorious gospel of the blessed God. But 
in the wise and inscrutable dispensations of Providence, 
this book of divine inspiration for its composition, had 
been committed to the uninspired intellect of man for its 
construction. What the meaning was of any one state- 
ment of fact, principle, sentiment or opinion contained in 
it, was to be ascertained by the ordinary operations of the 
human mind. It was mind impressed upon paper, in the 
characters of the alphabet. But the first five books of 
this compilation, the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, 
had been written very recently after the first invention of 
alphabetical writing, and contained in that mode of 
incorporating thought two thousand years of history 
before the existence of that invention ; when the narra- 
tive of events, and the lessons of morals, and the precepts 
of instruction must necessarily have been delivered from 
mind to mind, by some other mode of conveyance. It is 
well known that before the invention of alphabetical 
writing, the Egyptian records were kept in what was 
called hieroglyphics, or an art of expressing thought by 
imagery. Writing was the picture of thought. Material 
substances were thus represented by their portraiture, a 
man, a horse, a bird, a fish. The sun, moon and stars, 
mountains, trees and rivers, every object in nature visible 
to the eye, could be represented to the eye, by imitation. 



11 

In the progress of human improvement certain properties 
were observed invariably to belong to certain material sub- 
stances, and by common agreement the material substance 
was exhibited for the property belonging to it. Hence the 
extension of the art of hieroglyphic writing, and I submit 
to your consideration a conjecture which has often occurred 
to me, that the account of the creation in the book of Gen- 
esis, was only a transfer to alphabetic writing, of more an- 
cient Egyptian memorials in hieroglyphics. For we are 
expressly told that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of 
the Egyptians, and this may account for the representa- 
tion of the Spirit of evil in the form of a Serpent, and for 
that of life, and for the knowledge of good and evil, 
abstractions of the mind, in the shape of trees growing in 
the garden of Paradise. 

Be this however as it may, the books of Moses are 
written in the Hebrew language, a dialect of the Phoeni- 
cian ; as it was spoken by the children of Israel at the 
time of their emigration from Egypt about fifteen hundred 
years before the birth of Christ. The subsequent histori- 
cal books, from Joshua, the immediate successor of Moses, 
to Ezra and Nehemiah, contain the history of more than 
one thousand years, in the same language, modified from 
age to age, through the long lapse of years, and by the 
intermixture of the children of Israel with the various 
nations of Palestine, and with the Assyrians, Babylonians, 
Modes and Persians, by whom they were successively 
subdued and carried into captivity. The Psalms of David, 
as they are called, but really of him and of several other 
writers ranging through a period of a thousand years, the 
Proverbs, the Canticles, and the Ecclesiastes of Solomon, 
and the solemn and awful revelations from Heaven com- 
mitted to writing by seventeen prophets, are in the same 
language, with an intermixture of the Chaldaic in the 
books composed after the Babylonian captivity. All the 
Books of tlie New Testament, as originally composed, are 



12 

in the Greek language, and there are translations of all the 
Books of the Old Testament into the Greek and Latin 
languages, of so great antiquity, that by the vast majority 
of the Christian world they are considered in all respects 
of equal, and in some passages of superior authority to the 
Hebrew. 

These books, thus composed, are universally admitted, 
by all Christians of all denominations, as containing a rule 
of faith and a rule of life for all human kind. But, con- 
sidered merely as history, they relate a series of events 
almost entirely miraculous, that is of special interpositions 
of divine Providence, suspending the ordinary laws of 
physical nature, and operating by preternatural agency. 
Considered as prophecies, their predictions are darkly and 
mysteriously blended with their history — and there is 
among Christians great diversity of opinion, with regard 
to the import and meaning of the prophecies — diversities 
which have given rise to bitter controversies, to furious 
dissensions, and to cruel, bloody and exterminating wars. 

The Founder of the Christian religion himself, promised 
as a Redeemer of mankind from the transgression of their 
first parents in paradise — promised by a covenant of Al- 
mighty God with Abraham the father of the faithful, in 
the clear, explicit and repeated declaration that in his seed 
all the families of the earth should be blessed — promised 
again to his son Isaac, and to his son Jacob — promised 
through a long succession of ages, to Moses, to Daniel, to 
Solomon, to a long line of prophets and of kings — the Foun- 
der of the Christian religion himself, was crucified as a 
malefactor — numbered with the transgressors of that very 
law which he came to fulfil and to abolish. He suffered 
the ignominious death of the Cross, by the sentence of the 
law, delivered from Sinai, as understood and expounded 
by the high priest instituted by that divine dispensation. 

But this crucified Galilean, was the Saviour of the 
world — the Redeemer promised at the expulsion of 



13 

Adam from Paradise. In a career of four years of man- 
hood immediately preceding his death, he had unfolded 
to the world of mankind a new i^ule of life — a com- 
plete system of morals, founded upon two first principles ; 
two elementary ideas. The one, was life and immor- 
tality, or in other words, the resurrection. The other, 
was the law of brotherly love, founded upon the principle 
of the natural equality of mankind and the resulting prin- 
ciple of peace on earth, good will to men, and the duty 
of universal application of doing unto others as you would 
that they should do unto you. In these two elementary 
principles, all Christians of all denominations concur. 
Whoever derides or disbelieves them or either of them can 
have no claims to the title of a Christian. It was not 
indeed for the promulgation of either of these doctrines 
that he suffered death. It was for the assertion of his 
own authority as the promised Messiah, for the declaration 
that he was the Son of God — that he possessed and ex- 
ercised the power of performing miracles, and of forgiving 
sins ; and for the unqualified assertion, that if they should 
put him to death he would by his own resurrection and 
ascension within three days, prove the truth of his doc- 
trine of immortal life. He was accordingly sentenced to 
death, and the sentence was executed in strict conformity 
to the Law of Moses as it was understood by the Priests, 
the Scribes and Pharisees, the Ministers and Interpreters 
of the Law, And as he had foretold, on the third day 
from his crucifixion he rose again from the dead, was 
seen and conversed with by hundreds of his disciples for 
the space of forty days ; and then leaving them with the 
explicit declaration that all power was given unto him in 
heaven and in earth, and with the express command 
therefore^ to go and teach all nations, baptizing them in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost — teaching them, to observe all things whatsoever 
he had comrnanded the disciples, and with the promise 



14 

that he would be with them always, even unto the end of 
the world. 

Christian brethren and sisters ! when I undertook to 
discourse to you upon the subject of Education — upon 
the first superficial survey of my subject, under a sort of 
prepossession, that considerations connected with your 
temporal and worldly welfare would be the only motives 
proper to be presented by a layman to your minds, I 
naturally inquired of myself, as at the entrance of this 
address I have inquired of you, what I could possibly say 
to you for the promotion of the cause of education, which 
you do not daily and habitually say to yourselves ? But 
when, desirous of presenting in front the arguments which 
could operate at once upon your hearts and minds, I 
turned my thoughts to the principles and impulses which 
had influenced and directed your venerable ancestors, the 
first settlers of New England, the first and overruling mo- 
tive, which stood forth in prominent relief as the corner-stone 
of their History was Religion — the Christian Religion — 
And as this was not simply the Religion of Nature, but 
peculiarly the Religion of a Book, the first reference to 
that Book, its history and character, immediately disclosed 
the source of that deep and intense interest, that fervid 
and unceasing anxiety, which glowed in the bosoms of all 
the first founders of New England. The Religion of the 
Bible must be taught. It must be instilled into the mind 
of childhood, and believed even before it is understood. 
Worldly motives and interests, have been the exclusive or 
the predominating influences to the settlement of all other 
colonial establishments known to the history of mankind. 
The only exception of ancient history was the emigration 
of Abraham from Ur of Chaldea, and the subsequent 
exodus of his descendants, the children of Israel, from 
Egypt to settle in the promised land. They carried with 
them a Code of Laws delivered by God himself to Moses 
upon Mount Sinai, which they accepted by an express 



15 

and formal covenant, often repeated by their posterity, and 
binding upon them through all the vicissitudes of their 
fortunes, till the promised Mediator of the New Covenant 
appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He came 
among them, declaring himself as having existed before 
Abraham, as commissioned expressly by his Father and 
their Father, by his God and their God, to deliver to them 
a New Law, to fulfil and partially to supersede the Law 
delivered from Sinai. He came claiming to be their 
prophet, priest and king — but he declared that his king- 
dom was not of this world — It was the kingdom of 
Heaven — It was the resurrection from death to immortal 
life, — and his new Law — his new command — first to his 
own people, the children of Israel, and then to the whole 
race of man in that and all succeeding ages — was the Law 
of Love, That they should love one another. 

This simple and all-pervading principle was not in the 
Law of Moses. It was not in any preexisting code of 
Laws ever imposed upon men. It was buried in the heart 
of man, blended and surrounded with every selfish and 
sordid passion to which his fall from Paradise had sur- 
rendered him. But it was there, and Jesus who knew 
what was in man brought it forth, and proclaimed it as 
the transcendent and paramount Law of man's nature. 
At the same time he told his disciples, that as a test of his 
principles he must himself sutler a cruel and ignominious 
death — a death reserved for malefactors and slaves. He 
told them, that they must all expect for proclaiming the 
glad tidings of his gospel to share his fate and suffer like 
him — That their own hearts were so incrusted with evil 
passions, and perverse customs and traditions, that they 
themselves did not fully comprehend the extent and 
universality of his Law — That to conform their practice 
to it, they must be regenerated, must be born again, and 
become entirely new men — That they themselves knew 
not what spirit they were of, and that devoted to him 



16 

and his doctrines as they declared and believed themselves 
to be, they would all desert and deny him at his last 
hour — as they did. 

But he gave in his own person the proof of his doctrine 
of resurrection from the dead — and after that event, he 
promised them the Holy Ghost, as a Comforter for all 
they had suffered, and all they had yet to endure, and 
commanded them to go forth and teach all nations to ob- 
serve whatsoever things he had commanded them. 

Now this teaching of the commandments of Christ, to 
be observed by all nations, was by the express terms of 
the commission, recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew, to 
continue to the end of the world — and wherever the 
Christian religion is established, this teaching must be to 
child/'e7i, and it must continue through life. For it is not 
only doctrine but observance that must be taught — Faith 
and Works. 

The doctrine of immortal life, is so congenial to the 
heart even of unregenerate man ; it is so soothing even to 
his selfish passions, that it is easily believed by all to 
whom it is taught. Though not explicitly revealed in 
the Old Testament, it was believed, not as an article of 
faith, but as a speculative opinion by the generality of the 
Jewish nation ; excepting by the sect of the Sadducees, 
who denied it altogether. A clear, undoubting conviction 
of it, is the first article of the Christian faith, and it is 
accordingly taught by Christians of every denomination. 
A future state of retribution, a resurrection of bliss to all 
who have done good, and of condemnation to all who 
have done evil, is also a fundamental article of Christianity, 
although the particular nature of the happiness to be en- 
joyed, and the nature and extent of the condemnation to 
be endured, have not been explicitly revealed. 

But the doctrine of eternal life, is not the only lesson to 
be taught by the disciples of Jesus to all nations, to the 
end of the world — ^it is to be taught in connection indis- 



17 

soluble with the new commandment, to love one another. 
Among his last words at the table of the passover imme- 
diately before his death, he gave this neio commandment 
— and repeating it expressly said, " by this shall all men 
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to 
another." 

This precept, too, was understood by all his apostles, as 
embracing the whole substance of his commands — nor has 
it ever been questioned by any human being, recognizing 
his authority as a divine teacher of religion and morals. 

And with these two principles universally received by 
all who call upon the name of Christ, and acknowledge 
him as their Lord and Master, how is it comprehensible, 
that this religion of awful responsibility to God for the 
observance of universal benevolence to man, should have 
been for more than sixteen hundred years, from the day 
of Christ's passion till the settlement of New England, 
the source and cause from age to age of the bloodiest and 
most desolating wars that ever afflicted the human race. 
By what unaccountable perversity in the composition of 
the animal man, the only animated being on the face of 
the terraqueous globe, endowed by his Creator with the 
faculty of reason, is it, that the religion of Conscience and 
of Love, of glory to God in the highest, and of peace on 
earth, good will to men, should in the process of its 
operations on the heart and mind of man towards that 
consummation of its destiny, promised and intended by its 
Founder, when the practice of Christians shall correspond 
with the Christian faith, and all the kingdoms of the 
earth shall become the kingdoms of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
have been doomed to make its way through oceans of 
blood — through ages of persecution, through hatred 
and revenge, through bigotry and superstition, through 
avarice and ambition, through fraud and hypocrisy, 
through lust and pride, through fanaticism and delu- 
sion, through all that the Spirit of evil cau devise and all 



18 

that fallen man, .the compound of the tiger and the fox 
can perpetrate, to that serene empyrean of Heaven upon 
earth, when the Lion shall lie down with the Lamb, 
when the swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and 
the spears into pruning hooks — when nation shall no 
longer rise against nation, neither shall they learn war 
any more ? 

Christian Friends ! — The radical cause of this deplor- 
able inconsistency, and of all this melancholy depravity 
in the History of Mankind is defective Educaiion. That 
the human heart is deceitful above all things, and despe- 
rately wicked, had been said by divine inspiration, hun- 
dreds of years before the birth of the Redeemer, nor until 
his appearance upon earth had there been any improve- 
ment in its condition. Jesus was a teacher sent from God, 
to reveal the doctrine of immortal life and future retribu- 
tion, and to teach the way on earth to eternal blessedness 
in Heaven. 

But when the teacher has done his part, there remains 
to be performed the part of the learner. It was never 
promised by Jesus or his Apostles that the system of faith 
and of morals which he taught, should be forthwith re- 
ceived, understood and practised upon by all mankind. In 
confirmation of his doctrine of immortality, and to authen- 
ticate his mission from heaven, he performed miracles, or 
as he called them, mighty works. In illustration of the 
practice which he commanded his disciples to observe 
and to teach, he spoke in parables for the space of four 
years, disclosing even in minute detail the practical appli- 
cation of his new commandment of mutual love, to all the 
ordinary concerns of human life. But he came to teach, 
and not to compel. His Law was a Law of Liberty. He 
left the human mind and human action free, and the first 
lesson that he gave to his disciples was that he came to 
revolutionize the very nature of man — to regenerate him 
from the womb — to extirpate from his bosom all the evil 



19 

passions to which he had been surrendered by the disobe- 
dience of his first parents to the commandment of God, 
and to purify unto himself a pecuhar people, zealous of 
good works. Bat he gave them no encouragement to 
hope that this revolution in the very nature of man would 
be immediately or even speedily accomplished. He fore- 
warned them that he must himself suffer death in confir- 
mation of his mission by the treachery of one of them- 
selves. He announced and bewailed the impending ruin 
and destruction of Chorazin, of Bethsaida, of Jerusalem 
herself, for the hardness of the hearts of their people, who 
despised his authority, and rejected his commands. He 
told them plainly that they should have persecution in 
the world in proportion to their fidelity to him, and that 
he came not to bring Peace upon earth but a sword. 

A sword say you ? for what ? for what but for self- 
defence ? He brought it not for conquest — for tyranny 
or oppression — but he brought it to be used by his dis- 
ciples for their own defence, in their conflicts with the 
world against the tyranny and oppression of others. He 
was himself put to death, as he had foretold he should be, 
and upon his trial, rebuked one of his earliest disciples, 
for using the sword that he had brought, not in self- 
defence, but in useless and furious animosity against a 
servant of the high priest. 

In the execution of the command which he gave them 
after his resurrection and immediately before his ascen- 
sion, to go forth and teach all nations till the end of the 
world to observe all the commands which he had delivered 
to them — they went forth and taught. For the space of 
more than three hundred years, they met in return for 
this teaching, persecution, martyrdom, and cruel death. 
Still they taught — and still according to that beautiful 
parable of their Lord and Master, of the sower and the 
seed — although much of their seed fell by the way side 
and was devoured by the fowls of the air, much upon 



20 

stony places, where it could take no root, but sprang up 
and under a scorching sun, soon withered away ; much 
among thorns, which sprang up and choked them — yet 
other fell upon good ground, and brought forth fruit, 
some an hundred fold, some sixty fold, some thirty fold. 
And thus, under ten successive merciless decrees of so 
many Roman Emperors, masters of the world, prohibiting 
upon pain of death, this teaching of the disciples of Jesus, 
it was still making its way into the heart of man, irresis- 
tibly superseding the institutions of the Levitical Law, 
undermining and overthrowing the idolatrous worship of 
the Roman Empire, and prostrating before the simple 
command of mutual love from the lips of the Teacher of 
Nazareth, all the thrones and dominions, principalities and 
powers of the Earth. 

At length after more than three hundred years of pro- 
scription and persecution, the religion of Jesus ascended 
the imperial throne of the Ccesars, and was proclaimed 
mistress of the world. But alas ! the seed which until 
then had fallen by the way side and been devoured by 
the fowls of the air, was now destined to fall upon stony 
places, to spring up without root, and to wither away 
under the scorching sun of imperial power. Constantine 
adopted and professed and ordained the Christian religion, 
not in its own spirit of obedience to God and love to man, 
but as an instrument of conquest — as a weapon of war. 
He had seen or pretended to have seen a vision of a 
crucifix, at noon-day, transcending the light of the sun, 
and bearing the legible inscription in the Greek language 
— "By this, conquer." It was in the midst of a formidable 
war that this supernatural apparition presented itself to his 
eyes, which a cotemporary Christian historian, Eusebius, 
bishop of CaBsarea, declares was related by Constantine 
to himself many years after, confirmed by the solemnity 
of an oath. But whether this vision was the result of a 
fanatical delusion imposing upon the optical nerves of 



21 

Constantine himself, or whether it was a fraudulent and 
deliberate imposture, it carried with it internal evidence, 
that the establishment of Christianity upon the throne of 
the world, was not in the true spirit of the Redeemer, 
life, immortality and brotherly love, but war, hatred and 
conquest. Constantine therefore stripped from all the 
warlike standards of the empire the bird of prey, the 
Roman Eagle ; and supplied his place with the Labarum, 
the conquering and unconquerable emblem of the cross — 
and thenceforth the banners of the cross themselves 
became the banners of fraud and imposture, and the 
standard of a crucified Saviour, was waved over em- 
battled legions marching to conquest, instead of peaceful 
disciples teaching all nations the law of immortal life 
and of brotherly love. 

And upon this vicious foundation was soon erected a 
system of ecclesiastical hierarchy, in the progress of which 
the bishops of Rome, assuming to be the successors of 
Saint Peter, with the pastoral staff of a shepherd and the 
ring of a fisherman, arrogated to themselves a dominion 
over their brethren of the Christian faith, to which no 
sovereign of earthly origin ever presumed to aspire. From 
teachers of the gospel of Christ they were gradually 
metamorphosed by the ascendancy which they acquired 
over the minds of men, not only into sovereign temporal 
princes, but into superior beings, exempt from all the 
infirmities of human nature, invested with absolute and 
uncontrollable power, armed with the authority of setting 
up and putting down kings, of absolving subjects from 
the ties of allegiance to their sovereigns, of laying whole 
nations under interdict, and of distributing at their dis- 
cretion all the territories of the earth ; and to cap the 
climax of blasphemy, not only to forgive and redeem 
from punishment the transgressions of men, but to grant 
for money indulgences for the perpetration of crimes. 
Can it be conceived as possible that this abominable 



22 

system of fraud and imposture was actually consummated, 
originating in the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, 
commencing by small and imperceptible beginnings, but 
swelling and expanding into portentous immensity, for the 
space of nearly twelve hundred years, till the appointed 
day of Martin Luther. 

And during the same period, some of the seeds fell 
among thorns, which grew up with them and choked 
them — thorns of internal dissension and thorns of external 
war. Rival ambition had manifested itself among the 
twelve apostles of Jesus, even while he lived ; nor was it 
wholly extinguished by his severe admonition that they 
knew not what spirit they were of. Immediately after 
his decease, irritating debates and sharp animosities sprung 
up among them — multitudes of the Jewish converts main- 
taining that the whole Levitical law continued unre- 
pealed, and the proselytes from the gentiles inflexibly 
refusing to submit to the rite of circumcision, or to restrict 
themselves to the distinction between clean and unclean 
meats, or to encumber themselves with the burthensome 
ritual of the Mosaic law. In the Instructions of Jesus 
to his disciples, he had dwelt with emphatic solemnity 
upon the indispensable necessity of Faith in him and his 
doctrines, for admission to the kingdom of Heaven and 
for salvation to their immortal souls — but the law which 
he gave was a law of universal love, and no stronger 
evidence of Faith in him could be exhibited than by 
implicit observance of that Law. Now Faith, in the 
sense in which it was required by Jesus of his disciples, 
has been defined by the Apostle of the Gentiles "the 
substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things 
not seen." It is belief — a property of man's immortal 
soul, possessed by no other being upon earth. For belief 
gives to future time the anticipated certainty of the 
past — it annihilates time and space, and is the most 
powerful of all the arguments of natural religion to prove 



23 

the immortal nature of man. Well then might Jesus and 
his Apostles, in their teaching of mankind, dwell upon the 
transcendent importance and irresistible efficacy of this 
passive faith, this firm belief in the divine mission of 
the Saviour and in the promises of his gospel, for there is 
another property of faiih^ by which it regulates the con- 
duct of men. This is active faith, and is the foundation 
of all the moral relations between man and his fellow- 
creature man. This faith in action, is the adamantine 
chain which holds the moral elements of the world 
together. Faith in its passive sense may be considered 
as synonymous with confidence — in its active sense with 
fidelity. The definition of faith by St. Paul in the 11th 
chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is of passive 
faith — and he says elsewhere that it comes by hearing 
— and hearing by the word of God. But all the illus- 
trations throughout the whole of that chapter of the 
unbounded power of faith, consist of its efiicacy to the 
production of works ; as confidence in God ; as passive 
faith — belief in the omnipotence and goodness of God. 

You have all observed, my friends, in reading and 
comparing together the strong language of St. Paul in 
urging this all comprehensive power and influence of 
faith, with that of his brother Apostle James in the 
second chapter of his Epistle, where he seems to represent 
faith as altogether subordinate to works ; there is an 
apparent difierence between the two Apostles, as to the 
sense in which they understand the term Faith. The 
difference is only apparent. The definition of St. Paul 
is strictly confined to faith in its passive sense, as synony- 
mous with belief — confidence in God — but all his illus- 
trations, both special from Abel to Samuel and the prophets, 
and general, of the sufi'erings endured and of wonders per- 
formed by the faithful, are all, without a single exception, 
instances of faith manifested by works. So that St. 
James, who so emphatically declares that faith without 



24 

works is dead, and that the devils believe and tremble, 
manifestly refers only to that faith which is synonymous 
with belief, while St, Paul as manifestly refers to that 
faith which is synonymous with fidelity — the faith 
which is manifested in action, by the performance of 
good works. There is therefore no real difference be- 
tween the doctrines of the two Apostles ; but need I tell 
you that there was a difference, a deep and radical dif- 
ference of impression upon the minds of the disciples who 
heard them, with regard to this doctrine of faith and 
works, which after a lapse of nearly nineteen hundred 
years yet remains unadjusted, and which even now may 
expose me to the suspicion of heresy for this simple state- 
ment of my own views of the case. I pray you to under- 
stand that I am not about to involve myself or you in the 
controversy between Faith and Works — that I only 
speak historically ; only point out to you some of the 
thorns of internal dissension among which the seed of 
the blessed gospel fell immediately after it had been sown, 
and in the first century of the Christian era. And then 
came the trials of the Apostles ; the repeated imprison- 
ments of Peter ; the martyrdom of Stephen by a frantic 
multitude, and of James by the tyrant Herod ; the cruel 
persecutions first inflicted and afterwards endured by 
Paul ; the charges against the Christians of setting fire 
to Rome by Nero, and the long train of ten Persecutions 
from that time till the conversion of Constantino — while 
at the same time from the teeming fancies of the converts 
to Christianity multitudes of wild", extravagant and absurd 
sectarian creeds sprung up in the rank soil of the human 
heart, to obscure the divine light of the gospel and to choke 
the seed of the sower. The time will allow me barely to 
glance at the melancholy fertility of the successive growths 
of thorns which choked the seeds of the truth as it is in 
Jesus, for many centuries by the imposture of Mahomet 
founded upon the principle of inextinguishable War, in 



25 

direct opposition to that of perpetual and universal Peace, 
the pure and simple doctrine of Christianity — or by that 
perversion of Cln-istian principle generated by the false 
religion of the Koran, the Crusades for the recovery of 
the Sepulchre of Christ from the infidels, and the short 
lived establishment of a Christian kingdom in what was 
termed the holy land. 

Of all these obstructions to the establishment of the 
peacetul kingdom of Christ upon earth, the most terrible 
and the most fatal, was the dominion which the bishops 
of Rome, in the name and as the pretended successors of 
Saint Peter, had usurped over the minds of men. Instead 
of teaching all nations the observance of the commands 
of Christ, the bishops of Rome had in a long succession 
of ages erected a Sovereignty for ruling all nations, and 
teaching them only the commands of men — and they 
ruled with a rod of iron. We all know that the reforma- 
tion of this anti-Christian system was commenced by 
Martin Luther, and that although for ages before, in- 
eifectual struggles against it had been crushed by its 
power, it was the monstrous pretension and practice of 
selling indulgences for the commission of crimes, which 
was first contested and then assailed by him as a teacher 
of nations to the observance of the commands of Christ, 
according to the commission given by the Saviour to his 
disciples at the moment preceding his ascension. 

Of the progress of the Protestant Reformation it is 
impossible for me here to speak ; but in discoursing to you 
upon the importance and the transcendent duties of edu- 
cation, I pray you to remark that the direct issue between 
the Protestant reformers and the papal usurpations was 
educatioti. It was the freedom of thought against or- 
ganized power. It had been established as one of the 
fundamental articles of the Catholic faith, that the Roman 
Pontiff — the head of the Church — was infallible — that 
his will was law. That the keys of Heaven had been 
4 



26 

transmitted to him in uninterrupted succession from Saint 
Peter, and that aU other powers upon earth, were bound 
to imphcit obedience to his decrees, issued with a fraudulent 
semblance of humility in the professed capacity of a 
servant of servants. To secure this implicit obedience 
to his will, the word of God itself, the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament, were withheld from the in- 
spection of the People, and reserved to the exclusive 
possession of the Priesthood — for many ages not only 
the great mass of the People, but the Rulers of the earth, 
kings and emperors, were not even taught to read, and 
when in the revolutions of time, the languages in which 
the Oracles of God had been composed became extinct, 
no translation of them into any of the languages of modern 
Europe had been published, until Luther with his own 
hand, in defiance of the papal law, made the first trans- 
lation of them into German, 

Thus one of the first consequences of the Protestant 
Reformation was to unlock the Holy Scriptures to the 
understandings of the people — but that they might be 
qualified to receive them, it became indispensably neces- 
sary to teach the great mass of the people the art of read- 
ing. It was also necessary that this art should be taught 
in childhood ; not only because childhood is the period of 
human life best adapted to the reception of all religious 
impressions, but because the tenderness of affection for 
children had been signally manifested throughout his life 
by the Founder of Christianity, and because one of his 
most peremptory and affecting commands to his disciples 
had been, " Suffer little children to come unto me, and 
forbid them not." 

Education, then, the education of children, and the art 
of reading, was the primary impulse to the Protestant 
Reformation. The right of reading the Bible, was the 
first privilege secured to every follower of Christ, by the 
successful assault of Martin Luther upon the supremacy 
of the Church of Rome. 



27 

But the Reformation was the work of ages — it is not 
yet consummated. The Bible is the word of God, the 
seed of righteousness upon earth, and of blessedness in 
the world to come. But of this seed, much still falls by 
the way side, much on stony places, much among thorns ; 
and even of that which falls upon good ground, the returns 
are unequal, according to the richness of the soil and the 
variety of the seasons. Luther translated the Scriptures 
into the German language, and made them thus accessible 
to all his countrymen who could read. He was followed 
by a host of pious and learned men, of the other European 
nations, who translated the holy writings into the several 
languages of their respective countries, and thus the study 
of the Scriptures became the universal occupation of all 
the Christian nations. The invention of printing, which 
had preceded only by a few years the daring innovations 
of Luther, multiplied as the sands of the sea, the readers 
of the canonized books, and the splendid Polyglott Bible, 
compiled with immense labor, and published with princely 
magnificence by Cardinal Ximenes, furnished the learned 
patriarchs of the Reformation the means of correcting and 
improving their versions of the Old and New Testaments 
in the modern languages, by collating and comparing with 
each other not only the text of the Scriptures themselves, 
but the commentaries upon them and expositions of their 
contents, as well by the Doctors of the Jewish Sanhedrim, 
as by the Fathers of the Christian Church. 

The seals of divine revelation were thus broken, and 
the Bible was opened to the inspection and examination 
of the Protestant Christian throughout the world. But 
two steps further became indispensably necessary to the 
full enjoyment of the inestimable treasure thus dispensed 
to all classes of the community. The first was education 
— by dispensing to the whole people, the knowledge of 
the art of reading — and the second Avas the right of private 
judgment, or in other words the privilege of every reader, 



28 

to exercise the faculties of his own understanding in the 
interpretation of what he reads. 

And here we find the source of that inseparable connec- 
tion between knowledge, and virtue and liberty, which 
characterized your forefathers, the Puritan settlers of New 
England, beyond every other people upon earth. Other 
Colonies have been settled under the impulse of worldly 
interests — of commercial enterprise — of romantic adventure 
for the search of gold or silver mines, or from the baser 
motive of ambition varnished over with zeal — the conquest 
of unoffending nations under the hypocritical pretence of 
converting them to the Christian faith. 

The transcendent and overruling principle of the first 
settlers of New England, was Conscience. All the mon- 
archies of Christendom resisted the reformation of Luther. 
A war of thirty years was the immediate consequence of 
his secession from the Church of Rome, in his native land 
— a war, the ravages and desolation of which still arrest 
the traveller over those regions in his path, with the melan- 
choly reflection that the ruin inflicted by the hand of man, 
as it surpasses the destructive power, bids defiance even to 
the repairing hand of time. The wars of the Reformation 
extended over all Europe. They were modified by the 
political agitations and convulsions of the age. The spirit 
of reform was arrested in its progress by the apostacy of 
Henry the 4th in France — it severed from the crown of 
Spain the Provinces of the United Netherlands, and con- 
verted them into a Republic. It overthrew the dynasty 
of the Stuarts in Great Britain ; brought one of its monarchs 
to the block ; and expelled another and his family for- 
ever from the throne. In the process of these convulsions 
a portion of the people of England, withdrew from the 
field of persecution and of blood ; not from any motives 
of worldly welfare, but to the total sacrifice of them all, 
for the uninterrupted enjoyment of the rights of conscience ; 
for the privilege of holding the Holy Scriptures as their 



29 

only rule of faith, and of interpreting them by the dictates 
of their own understanding. 

Now to a colony thus composed, the education of their 
children was a necessary of life more indispensable than 
food, or raiment, or shelter. Their bodies might perish 
by famine, or by nakedness, or by exposure to the inclem- 
ency of winter snows and barren rocks, in a region where 
it has recently been said that granite and ice are the only 
productions of nature — but animal life, the preservation of 
their bodies, was to them but a secondary concern. The 
food for which they hungered and thirsted was for the 
nourishment of the spirit, and the preservation of the 
never dying soul. This was the Faith that came by 
hearing. The first of all their wants was teachers — 
teachers for themselves — teachers for their children. 

Was I not then justified in saying that Education was 
the mother of New England ? — that the predominating 
and controlling impulse which brought our forefathers 
from a land where they were in the enjoyment of every 
temporal blessing, and which they tenderly loved, as their 
country, to a howling wilderness where they could enjoy 
nothing but Conscience and Freedom, was Education 7 
Such is the testimony of their History — what is the lan- 
guage of their Laws ? 

With the first settlers of the Massachusetts Colony, 
there came over learned and pious men, educated at the 
English Universities, and some of them among the most 
eminent divines of the age. On board the Arabella, the 
vessel in which Governor Winthrop came, religious 
worship was regularly performed, every Lord's day, even 
in the most tempestuous weather ; and immediately after 
their departure from the coast of England, they appointed 
two days in the week, upon which Mr. Phillips, their 
minister, catechised the people. 

On their arrival in this land, their first care was to keep 
a day of thanksgiving in all their plantations, and no 



30 

sooner had they fixed upon the three hills as the spot for 
their settlement, than they formed themselves into a 
church, and chose Mr. Wilson their Teacher, Mr. Newell 
an Elder, and Mr. Gager and Mr. Aspenwall, Deacons. 
Nor is it to be forgotten that in our own town of Braintree, 
the gathering of the church preceded the incorporation of 
the town — that the primary cause of the formation of the 
church, was the inconvenience and sometimes impossibility 
for the inhabitants of Mount Wollaston to attend public 
worship at Boston, and that small as their numbers were, 
they chose two persons for the administration of their 
spiritual concerns, one under the denomination of Pastor, 
and the other of Teacher. 

Within six years after their landing in the wilderness, 
four hundred pounds were given by the General Court of 
the Massachusetts Colony towards the establishment of 
-a public school at Newtown, afterwards called Cambridge ; 
.and two years later, a teadter of the word of God, John 
Harvard, self-expatriated from England, as if by an ex- 
press dispensation of divine Providence, came, for one 
short year to break the bread of life to the Church at 
Charlestown, and then to depart for the world of spirits, 
leaving his whole fortune for the foundation of a College 
-which will bear his name in reverence and honor on the 
wings of Time to the end of the world. 

In the same year in which that illustrious body sent forth 
the first fruits of New England education to the world, 
the General Court enacted a law declaring, that " For as 
much as the good education of children is of singular 
behoof and benefit to any commonwealth — that the 
.selectmen of every town, in the several precincts and 
quarters where they dwell, shall have a vigilant eye over 
their brethren and neighbors to see, first, that none of 
them shall sufler so much barbarism in any of their 
families as not to endeavor to teach, by themselves or 
kOthers, their children and apprentices, so much learning, 



31 

as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue, 
and knowledge of the capital laws." 

Also that all masters of families do once a week (at the 
least) catechise their children and servants in ilte grounds 
and principles of religion. 

There are other provisions in this law, all adapted to 
the purpose of carrying it into full execution. 

Four years later (in 1646) in the enactment of a code 
of criminal law, it was provided, that if any child or 
children, above sixteen years old, and of sufficient under- 
standing, shall curse or smite their Jiatural father or 
mother, he or they shall be put to death, unless it can be 
sufficiently testified that the parents have been very 
unchristianly negligent in the education of such children 
— and a law in the same words was some years afterwards 
enacted in the Plymouth Colony. 

And in May, 1647, in addition to all these preceding en- 
actments for the teaching of religion by the organization 
of Churches, and for the instruction of children in their 
families, a general law was passed, requiring of every 
township within the jurisdiction, consisting of fifty house- 
holders, to appoint forthwith, a teacher of all such chil- 
dren who should resort to him, to write and read, to be 
paid either by the parents or masters of such children or 
by the inhabitants of the town. And further, that every 
town consisting of one hundred families or householders- 
should set up a grammar school, the master thereof being 
able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the 
university. 

And listen to the beautiful — may I not say sublime 
preamble to this law, declaring the motive and purpose 
of its enactment. 

" It being one chief project of Satan to keep man from 
the knowledge of the Scripture, as in former times keep- 
ing them in unknown tongues, so in these latter times by 
persuading from the use of tongues, that so at least the 



32 

true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded 
and corrupted with false glosses of deceivers ; to the end 
that learning may not be buried in the graves of our fore- 
fathers, in Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting 
our endeavors. It is therefore ordered by this court and 
authority thereof," &c. 

Here then, in the Laws enacted by the first settlers of 
New England, is a complete system of instruction, based 
upon the principle that human life, from the cradle to the 
grave, is a school — That at every period of his existence, 
man wants a teacher, and that his pilgrimage upon earth 
is but a term of childhood, in which he is to be educated 
for the manhood of a brighter world. Let the scoffer at 
the demure spirit and austere manners of the Puritans, 
survey the history of mankind — let him ransack the 
annals of every gathering of man into society from the 
confusion of Babel to the settlement of Sierra Leone, New 
South Wales or Liberia, and find a parallel to this primi- 
tive code of New England Colonial Law ! 

This system continued in full force until, in the progress 
and vicissitudes of the reformation in the parent coun- 
try, the charter of the Colony was annulled by the despi- 
cable tyrant Charles the Second. Immediately after the 
revolution of 1688, a new Charter was obtained from 
William and Mary, including the Colonies of Massachu- 
setts and Plymouth as well as the District of Maine and 
Nova Scotia. By the vacation of the Charter, all the 
preceding Colonial Laws were understood to have been 
superseded with it, and as the jurisdiction of the New 
Province extended over several preceding Colonies, which 
had been governed by different laws, an entire new 
system of Legislation became necessary. Hence, among 
the laws of the very first sessions of the General Court 
mider the new Charter, was an Act for the Settlement 
and Support of Ministers and Schoolmasters. 

This Statute preserved and fortified the system of 



33 

education which sixty years before had been established 
by the founders of the Colony — the system of universal 
education, providing at once for the support of the Pastor 
and the Schoolmaster, the teacher of adult age and the 
teacher of children, by the common contributions of all. 
In proportion as the population, and the worldly wealth of 
the Province increased, this system was expanded and 
enlarged by subsidiary legislation, till the revolution 
which severed the North American Colonies from the 
British Empire, At that time, when the People of the 
Commonwealth were called upon in their sovereign 
capacity to form a Constitution of Government for them- 
selves, they declared by a special Article in their Declara- 
tion of Rights, that as the happiness of a people, and the 
good order and preservation of civil government, essentially 
depend upon piety, religion and morality ; and as these can- 
not be generally diffused through a community, but by the 
institution of the public worship of God, and of public 
instructions in piety, religion and morality, therefore the 
Legislature were authorized to require the several towns, 
parishes, precincts and other bodies politic or religious 
societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, 
for the institution of the public worship of God, and for 
the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers 
of piety, religion and morality, in all cases where such pro- 
vision shall not be made voluntarily. 

Such was the opinion and such the ordinance of your 
fathers in the days of their severest trials, and when their 
afflictions taught them to place all their reliance upon 
their Creator. The people of Massachusetts in their days 
of prosperity and enjoyment have seen fit to repeal this 
Article of their Bill of Rights, and to leave the support of 
religion and morality, and of their teachers to the volun- 
tary contributions of the People alone. Fondly would I 
hope that this constitutional alteration has proceeded from 
no growing indifference to the cause of piety, religion and 
5 



34 

morality, but from a firm conviction that they will be as 
liberally and effectively supported by voluntary contribu- 
tion, as they ever have been by legislative enactment. 

The Constitution of the Commonwealth had also a 
special Chapter, for the preservation, protection, and pro- 
motion of all the rights, privileges and immunities of 
Harvard University ; and the general encouragement of 
Literature — making it the special duty of Legislatures and 
Magistrates in all future periods of the Commonwealth, to 
cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all 
seminaries of them : especially the University at Cam- 
bridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns. 

From these provisions in the Constitution of the State, 
we have ample evidence, that at no period of our history 
has the interest of the People in behalf of education been 
more ardent and intense than it was at the time when in 
the midst of a most calamitous and terrible civil war, they 
were first summoned to exercise the rights and to wield 
the powers of an Independent People. 

I have already detained you too long to protract the 
call upon your attention, by entering upon a detail of the 
legislation of the Commonwealth on the subject of edu- 
cation since that time. It is no pleasant recollection to 
bring to your minds, and it is yet a duty with which I 
cannot dispense, to remark that the very first act of legis- 
lation under the government of the Commonwealth, for 
the instruction of youth, and for the promotion of good 
education, presents a painful relaxation if not an inex- 
cusable dereliction of the spirit which until then had 
animated all our forefathers. The act of 1693, merely 
repeating the provisions of that of 1647, required that 
every town having the number of fifty householders, or 
upwards, should be consianily provided of a schoolmaster 
to teach children to read and write, and that in every 
town of one hundred families, there should be kept a 
grammar school, by a person well instructed in the 



35 

tongues. In the act of 1789, the duty requh-ed of towns 
of fifty householders is only to have schoolmasters to 
teach reading and writing, for such term of time as shall 
be equivalent to six months for one school in each year. 
Towns of one hundred families only, were required to 
keep a teacher of reading and writing the year round ; and 
only towns of two hundred families to keep a grammar 
school. 

You will observe that by this alteration of the law, 
one-half the time of all the children of the Common- 
wealth, of teachable age for learning to read and write, 
was taken away, and the same principle as might easily 
be shown pervaded the whole law, diminishing the facili- 
ties for acquiring education, provided by the law, at least 
by one-half. What were the motives for this change I 
presume not now to inquire ; but I cannot otherwise than 
consider it as evidence of an unhappy decline of that 
fervid spirit, for the education of children, which was so 
signally characteristic of the Pilgrim fathers of the Colony 
— of the native fathers of the Province — and of the 
founders of the Constitutional Commonwealth, The 
general spirit of your laws relative to education, since 
that time, has been to multiply the objects of study upon 
your children, and to diminish the time which you allow 
them for making the acquisition of learning. This evil 
has not yet been removed. You may be startled at 
hearing that since the act of 1789, you yourselves have 
enjoyed facilities of learning at most half equal to those 
which your forefathers enjoyed from the first settlement 
of the Colony — and that your children now enjoy no 
more than you have possessed yourselves. I speak not now 
of private schools and academies endowed by the benefi- 
cence of individuals, or accessible to the children of 
opulence ; but of schools provided by law, and accessible 
to the children of all. In very recent years, the People 
of the Commonwealth have kindled with a fresh ardor 



^ 



36 

in the cause of education, and their Legislature have 
shared largely of their noble enthusiasm. The annual 
returns of schools, from all the towns of the Common- 
wealth ; the institution of a liberal and enlightened Board 
of Education ; the annual reports and indefatigable labors 
of their able and eloquent Secretary ; and the provision 
made, by an affecting union of individual munificence 
with public bounty, for normal schools, to elevate the 
standard of instruction by the education of accomplished 
teachers — all these are pledges of delightful promise for 
the improvement of the rising and future generations. 

But my friends and brethren of my native town, to 
return to the radical thought upon which I invited you 
to consider this subject, and which you may perhaps 
think more appropriate to the religious exercises of the 
Lord's day, and to the hallowed lips of your reverend 
pastor, than to the amusement of a weekday, and the 
discourse of a man of the world, let me close as I began 
with intreating you to bear in mind that the invincible 
spirit which brought your Puritan fathers to New Eng- 
land, was Education. Let us impress it indelibly on our 
own minds ; let us impress it to the extent of our ability 
upon others, that Education is the business of human life 
— that our religion is the religion of a book — and that the 
meaning of that book is intrusted by divine Providence 
to the deliberate judgment of our own understandings. 
That as the child must be educated for manhood upon 
earth, so the man must be educated upon earth, for 
heaven ; and finally that where the foundation is not laid 
in Time, the superstructure cannot rise for Eternity. 



